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Report 1816
Report #1816 Skillset: Aethercraft Skill: Ramming Org: Celest Status: Approved Sept 2017 Furies' Decision: We will look into solutions Problem: Ramming is a potentially awesome mechanic that I have -never- seen used because it relies on hull damage to succeed. That is, if the target ship is damaged enough to be rammed, it's always better to just blow it up. The secondary issue that this report can help address are mega-ships which are very boring to just grind down after overwhelming with module damage. 3 R: 3 Solution #1: Change the success chance of ramming from being based on hull damage to pilot module damage, such that if the pilot's module is completely damaged out, there is a 100% chance of the ram succeeding, and scaling down sharply from there, with a 0% chance when under moderate damage. The idea here being that the pilot is unable to evade ramming. 5 R: 1 Solution #2: Add a virtual module to every aethership. The aetherdock module. This can be damaged down just like any other module, and controls the chances of ram succeeding, just like in solution one. 2 R: 2 Solution #3: In addition to solution 1, or solution 2, make ramming always link to a random manned module, and if no modules are manned, to a random unmanned module. Allowing the breaching party to reliably take out at least one person from the enemy ship, even if they get locked out by reinforced doors. Player Comments: ---on 9/10 @ 17:42 sets as pending ---on 9/11 @ 11:48 writes: All solutions sound interesting ---on 9/11 @ 20:26 writes: I think solution 3 needs to just make it go to the grid, since that is the only module that is ultimately required to keep a ship flying. Breaching into the chair, turret, or an even less important manned module like a collector is pointless when the grid could still be literally a thousand rooms away. ---on 9/11 @ 21:42 writes: I've been thinking about this some more since we spoke. I'm going to start off by raising some of the comments brought up on envoys, which is that making ramming easier is slightly problematic in that it turns aetherspace battles from being about aetherspace to being about "who has the best fighting party" (which mostly everything else already is anyways). There were some other ideas being tossed around (such as changing how Seal works, how whistling works, etc. to make it more feasible to contest without changing the underlying ship v. ship mechanics). ---on 9/11 @ 21:45 writes: In regards to the actual mechanical idea: Solution 1 doesn't really make a lot of sense in that a big ship has essentially no evasion anyways (they are slow, sluggish things) so no matter how damaged the pilot's chair, the ship is (from an actual concept basis) just as evasive as it always was. In addition module damage is a lot easier to pile on and a lot harder to heal off, so in actual practical mechanical terms the ram rate will essentially always be 100% after just a short period of time. Solution 2 has the problem of: "Place unbreakable doors at every module along with a monolith sigil, if someone gets on the ship, /shrug?". Solution 3 kind of addresses the concern there to solution two, but I'm just not really feeling making ramming more feasible at this point. Per our discussion and further consideration I'm a lot more interested in making the ship mechanics more dynamic. ---on 9/18 @ 21:44 writes: I agree with Falaeron wrt it going to the Grid and would further say that ramming should be based on the shield module, not the chair. ---on 9/23 @ 18:37 writes: Just to clarify my reject votes. I find none of these choices appealing and after discussion with people who actually own "megaships" feel a better solution to the issue is to have the Empath Grid failure rate scale higher the larger a ship is. This means targetting a "megaship"'s empath actually has tangible effect and even putting Grid to 150% will not gaurantee healing reliabilty. This solution can be applied to modules like Turrets as well, perhaps increasing balance the more damaged a turret is, based on ship size. The options presented in this report just force aetherspace to require a large crew all the time and limit less active orgs from participating, as well as turning ram into an 'i-win' button. ---on 9/23 @ 18:46 writes: I'm more inclined with solution three going to grid instead, otherwise I'm inclined to two. ---on 9/24 @ 08:44 writes: @Danquik - This report is to make ramming interesting/possible, with the secondary effect of helping give an option against mega-ships. It isn't intended to entirely solve that problem. I would hope that you take that into consideration before rejecting it out of hand. It wasn't written simply to solve the problem that you set forth.